Dwarka colony reels under marathon outages

The residents of Bhagwati Garden Extension, Dwarka Mor, cannot remember the last time they had electricity all day. The power cuts last from midnight to early morning, and make their lives miserable in the hot summer months.Sunita Shahbadi, a resident of the recently regularised colony, said:

The residents of Bhagwati Garden Extension, Dwarka Mor, can’t remember the last time they had power all day. The outages last from midnight to early morning, and make their lives miserable in the hot summer months.

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Sunita Shahbadi, a resident of the recently regularised colony, said: “There was no electricity today from midnight to 6am. Again, there was an outage from 9.30am to 3pm. Living here is a nightmare.”

Suresh Bhardwaj’s family is also suffering. “I am unable to sleep at night. My children attend extra classes and return home only at 7pm. They can’t sleep or study,” he said.

Residents alleged that the BSES customer care does not give satisfactory answers. “Whenever we call them to report power failure, they either say there is a breakdown or maintenance work is on,” said ML Shahbadi, Sunita’s father.

Jagdish Sharma, who has been living here for the past eight years, concurs: “Today we called the helpline and they assured us there will be no outage. But it was a lie,” he added.

BSES Rajdhani Power Ltd, which supplies power to the colony, claimed the outage was unavoidable. “It was a planned shutdown from 8.50am to 3pm. A panel board needed to be changed. We are adding another transformer to the locality to ensure there are no power cuts in the future. This is being done on the government’s directions,” said a BSES Rajdhani Power Ltd official.

“The Pappankalan I and II grids are not connected, hence the power cuts. The Pappankalan I grid, which supplies power to Dwarka Mor, is overloaded,” Mukesh Sharma, the area MLA, said. “However, the other grid can still take 30 per cent more load and which is why they are now being connected,” Sharma added.